RHEL 7 : binutils (RHSA-2021:4037)

high Nessus Plugin ID 154855

Synopsis

The remote Red Hat host is missing a security update for binutils.

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 7 host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the RHSA-2021:4037 advisory.

The binutils packages provide a collection of binary utilities for the manipulation of object code in various object file formats. It includes the ar, as, gprof, ld, nm, objcopy, objdump, ranlib, readelf, size, strings, strip, and addr2line utilities.

Security Fix(es):

* Developer environment: Unicode's bidirectional (BiDi) override characters can cause trojan source attacks (CVE-2021-42574)

The following changes were introduced in binutils in order to facilitate detection of BiDi Unicode characters:

Tools which display names or strings (readelf, strings, nm, objdump) have a new command line option
--unicode / -U which controls how Unicode characters are handled.

Using --unicode=default will treat them as normal for the tool. This is the default behaviour when
--unicode option is not used.
Using --unicode=locale will display them according to the current locale.
Using --unicode=hex will display them as hex byte values.
Using --unicode=escape will display them as Unicode escape sequences.
Using --unicode=highlight will display them as Unicode escape sequences highlighted in red, if supported by the output device.

For more details about the security issue(s), including the impact, a CVSS score, acknowledgments, and other related information, refer to the CVE page(s) listed in the References section.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Update the RHEL binutils package based on the guidance in RHSA-2021:4037.

See Also

http://www.nessus.org/u?9b1cb065

https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#moderate

https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/RHSB-2021-007

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2021:4037

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2005819

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 154855

File Name: redhat-RHSA-2021-4037.nasl

Version: 1.10

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 11/3/2021

Updated: 11/7/2024

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: High

Score: 7.3

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Moderate

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.1

Temporal Score: 4

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:H/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2021-42574

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.3

Temporal Score: 7.5

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:binutils, p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:binutils-devel, cpe:/o:redhat:rhel_aus:7.3

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/RedHat/release, Host/RedHat/rpm-list, Host/cpu

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 11/1/2021

Vulnerability Publication Date: 11/1/2021

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2021-42574

CWE: 838

IAVA: 2021-A-0528

RHSA: 2021:4037